


A General, But Also Very Specific Collection

by helvetica_upstart



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Ficlet Collection, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-17 23:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21601156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helvetica_upstart/pseuds/helvetica_upstart
Summary: A collection of Schitt's Creek ficlets!Chapter 3: "Is that lingerie?"
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 30
Kudos: 267
Collections: The Rosebudd Ficlets





	1. Canadian Revenue Agency

There’s one heart-stopping moment when David sees the Canadian Revenue Agency envelope in their mailbox. He hides in the stock room to do some meditative breathing and drink a glass of wine, but that’s the extent to his panic. Rose Apothecary is being audited but he’s fine, really, to his own and everyone else’s surprise.

Patrick is not.

It’s easy to miss, to the untrained eye, but David knows his husband. Of course, every time David tries to talk about it, Patrick turns it around on him, doting and reassuring as if _David’s_ the one muttering about tax law in his sleep.

By the third night, when David wakes up cold in and empty bed, he’s had enough. He finds Patrick in their office, hunched over his laptop. He’s been carrying all his tension in his shoulders lately, so David massages them gently and murmurs, “Come back to bed.”

“I’m almost done.” Patrick turns to press a kiss to David’s hand, his left hand, and says, “We have nothing to worry about, okay?”

David rests his chin on Patrick’s head. The laptop screen is taken up by Excel sheets in three windows. “I know that. Do you know that?”

"I do. It’s just— last year, in our third quarter, I was so distracted by the wedding— or, god, when we first opened I barely knew what I was doing—“

“Honey. You could do this in your sleep.” He has been, this week, David’s eye-bags can attest. “I know you’ve got this—“

Patrick’s exhale is ragged. “I just— you trust me, and that’s. That’s everything to me, David. I don’t want to let you down.”

David has to turn him in the office chair, then, and settle on his lap and kiss the lines of tension away on his forehead. It’s overwhelming, sometimes, being loved like this: David overflows with it, can’t do anything except love Patrick back as hard and as best as he knows how. Patrick tilts his head up, seeking David’s lips, and David tries to put all of that love into the kiss. By the time he pulls back, his thoughts have crystalized. “You couldn’t let me down.”

“I could,” Patrick says, stubborn, the lines back on his face. “I found a hashtag-ref error on sheet ten—“

“You couldn’t,” David repeats. “Lose the store, lose the house, okay, we’ll figure it out. Do you even know how you’ve— I’ve lost it all before, okay, I know what that looks like, and let me tell you— as long as you love me, that’s what matters. Fuck the rest.”

David can’t tell if Patrick is laughing or crying, maybe both, but then they’re kissing again and this time when David says “Come back to bed,” Patrick listens.

Patrick snuggles onto David’s chest, and David can feel the way his lips curve into a smile against David’s shoulder as he says, “We aren’t losing the store or the house. I got this.”

“Damn right you do,” David says, and pulls him closer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shoutout to Delilah McMuffin for the prompt "Patrick has a panic attack. David is the calm, rational one" and to the Rosebudd for the most exciting Jukebox content since John Mulaney's trip to the Salt & Pepper diner


	2. Olive Branch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: AU where after The Barbeque, David tells Patrick it's over.
> 
> content warning for canon-typical mentions of toxic people in David's past

David’s ex-best friend was a crisis manager. They’d met at an airport bar: she was gorgeous and sharp in a Fendi jumpsuit, and he was crying into a vodka tonic over Alexis’s ransom note. She drew out a plan to save Alexis on a bar napkin in felt-tipped pen, then bullied the airline into letting her onto his flight. She was the first person who saw David at his worst and wanted more instead of less; for the next few months, he clung to her like a life raft until he realized that part of _wanting more_ was the way she casually ensured that there was always a crisis in his life for her to manage.

So that sucked. He cut her out, with difficulty and occasional relapses, but first he did learn from her how to manage a crisis: you can only have one goal. “It’s like running out of a fire. You just take the most important thing,” she’d said. “You have to be willing to let everything else burn.”

David’s not good at that. His instinct will always be to save everything. He missed her, for just a moment, when the Canadian Revenue Services showed up at the front door to Rose Mansion and David hardly saved anything at all.

 _You have to be willing to let everything else burn,_ David reminds himself, gathering his strength on the stoop to Rose Apothecary. Their store can survive this, if they both choose to make that their goal. He takes a deep breath, and then goes inside to talk to Patrick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (and then they unpacked these feelings and got back together and lived happily ever after)


	3. The Laundry Stalemate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt: David and Patrick are in a stand-off. Both are refusing to do the laundry. David has an endless supply of clothes so he is fine. Patrick, on the other hand, is running low of options.

Patrick is going to win The Laundry Stalemate. Sure, David may have a near-infinite supply of designer clothing in The Love Room; and sure, Patrick may be wearing corduroys and a striped chartreuse polo he found crumpled in the darkest corner of their closet, possibly left behind by the previous owners. But he’s got one thing David doesn’t have, and that’s—

“David,” Patrick says from behind the cash, pulse rising, voice strangled, “Is that lingerie?”

David is crouching to restock the bottom shelf with product, his sweater riding up to reveal a sliver of bare skin. When he twists to look at Patrick, his sweater bunches further, leaving the peek of black lace above the waistband of his pants absolutely unmistakable.

“Mhm. Yes, yes it is.”

Patrick’s corduroys are suddenly too tight. He rubs his hands across his hot face. “Great. It’s not going to be the longest afternoon of my life or anything, pretending I don’t know you’re in lace panties.”

“Sorry, honey,” David says, his lip curling devastatingly. “I was out of clean socks.”

Patrick can’t seem to get enough blood to his brain to do anything but repeat what David just said. “Socks.”

David rises from his crouch in a fluid, luxurious motion. He strokes his palms down his own thighs. “Feels nice, though. I should break out the garter more often.”

“Garter,” Patrick might say; it’s hard to hear over the static in his brain. “Garter?” he might say again, stumbling towards David.

He gets a few seconds of David giggling in his arms, of David letting Patrick’s hands roam over his ass and thighs, before David extricates himself.

“Your shirt smells like wet cardboard and eggs,” David says sadly.

“It does,” Patrick says, also sadly. “If I go home and do laundry, will you send a photo to keep me company?”

David’s eyes go bright. “Yes. Does this mean I won?”

“David,” Patrick says as he walks out the door, “Your husband is in a polo that smells like wet cardboard and eggs, and my husband is in lingerie. I think I won.”

**Author's Note:**

> come hang out with me @ [ helvetica-upstart.tumblr.com!](https://helvetica-upstart.tumblr.com)  
> 


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